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So...apparently the WH is awash in "scandals" on a par with Watergate and Iran Contra if one were to listen to Fox News. These would include the Benghazi incident and the IRS conservative group targeting. One might throw in the incipient AG probe of AP reporter phone logs, but that's still rather young and developing.

Simply the GOP and reflexive trying to manufacture scandal out of low-rent kerfuffle in some desperate bid to further politically hamstring Obama and to divert attention from their dire low-popularity of themselves and their policies?

I would rate it, currently, as about 25% option 2 and 75% option 3.

None of these are, presently, even remotely of the scale or culpability of a Watergate or Iran Contra, regardless of shrill GOP attempts to portray them as such. Indeed, I think they greatly risk overreaching badly on this and further tarnishing what's left of their political credibility outside of GOP circles, ala the Clinton impeachment attempt.

Both the Benghazi affair and the IRS bungle seem to be nothing more than standard grade administrative screw-ups, albeit with some serious consequence in some aspects of the Benghazi affair (inadequate security).

The IRS "affair" seems, at this point, to be little more than desperate local IRS hacks trying to get ahead of an onslaught of 503(c) applications while under pressure to assure that these shady groups are what they claim to be. That and a political tone-deafness that perhaps is understandable with mid-level CPA types rather than the polished political sensibilities of Washington higher-ups.

Option 3 I think explains most of the noise that's being manufactured around these affairs - that and the presses love of controversy, any controversy, for its own sake, regardless of actual merit. The GOP seems to have a genetic go-for-the-throat instinct, especially when otherwise cornered by rock bottom public regard, existential fear of demographic extinction and lack of any broadly popular (outside their own echo chambers) new policies.

Their own recent 2012 autopsy fairly bluntly exposes these weaknesses though only comes up with some modest and surface solutions to them, all of which risk fracturing an increasingly fractious base. So, rather than risk civil war by turning their guns on themselves, try, desperately, to turn them outward to your mortal enemies, Obama and the Dems.

Unfortunately for the GOP, I think this reflexive blood sport instinct may well be grossly overplayed just as it was with Clinton. Even after that scandal and impeachment attempt, the wooden and weak VP Gore was in fact elected president by the majority of voters with the GOP contender actually only being selected president by dint of election system, legal technicalities and a compliant SCOTUS.

Unless something truly substantive, rather than inflated and trumpeted, turns up beyond pedestrian political clumsiness and administrative mismanagement in these "affairs," the GOP highly risks looking shrill, petty and vindictive and lowering their even now dismal poll numbers.

That said, the Dems do need to get ahead of all this and not appear, or be, simiply reactive and defensive. As is usually the case, its not the original event/scandal itself that causes all the damage but rather, the subsequent reactions to them. This is especially true in second terms when administrations get both complacent and self-possessed, and just a bit weary overall.